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Adventures in 3D Printing

No, really. For our anniversary, he got me a 3D printer. This one to be exact. It’s an MP Mini Delta, which is a great intro-line model printer that still prints with decent quality and size for its price.

I’ve been wanting a 3D printer for ages, mostly so that I could print all sorts of awesome things for our tabletop games, but more recently so that I could print things related to my books. I mean, how cool would it be to have a 3D model of Eerl or Adelei?

I could have my own action figure of my characters! O_O

There is a bit of a learning curve with this new hobby, but luckily I’m married to someone who knows a thing or two about the topic and is willing to help me learn. There’s also a flood of Maker groups, sites, etc. to help as we go through the process.

Since we were snowed/iced into our house part of last week (though it melted by Saturday afternoon), we decided to use the time printing a bunch of test prints, as seen below. (You can click the images to see them larger.) Our printer will print things a bit larger than a tall coffee mug, but we wanted to stick with smaller objects to test things out since the smaller objects print faster. These images are also of the objects unsanded and unpainted. That’s something I plan to do this coming weekend. 😉

This is Neko, who is a finger puppet because we printed him hollow. He’s about 3″ tall.

This is a barrel and two wagon wheels–objects that will be props for our Pathfinder campaign at some point.

Here’s a nice group shot of some objects.

One of the things we’re also going to do is to set up a web cam so that you can watch the 3D printing as it happens (if that’s something that interests you). There’s something mesmerizing about the process! And on that note, back to writing…and maybe some 3D printing!

About the author

She spent most of her K-12 education doodling stories and 500 page monstrosities that are forever locked away in a filing cabinet. When she's not writing, she's getting her game on, enjoying cartography, or staring at the ocean.

She lives in Seattle, WA with her husband, and their three kitties who enjoy lounging across the keyboard when writing deadlines approach.